JOURNALISTS AT BUSINESS Insider in the US have been told of a number of rumours about male rapes occurring in oil towns across America.

When Robert Johnston was contacted by multiple sources in Williston about something similar, he decided to investigate the North Dakota oil boom town for himself.

While he was unsure about the veracity of the story, he said he found reasons for why people refer to the Northern Plains oil towns as something from the Wild West.

A ton of men are flocking to such towns for work and finding places where there is a shortage of law enforcement and very few women.

After arriving to Williston, Johnston met women who had come with their husbands, as well as women who were actually born in the town or who came also for the work.

There were not many of them, and the ones he did speak to were “very aware of their small numbers”.

The women also knew the story of Sherry Arnold.

Arnold was a school teacher born in Sidney, Montana – a small town not dissimilar to Williston that sits atop the Bakken oil field. The two towns are just 45 miles apart – which Johnston describes as mere “spitting distance” in that vast part of the country.

Arnold was out jogging one morning in January near her childhood home when she was apparently kidnapped and killed by two workers fresh from Colorado looking to make their fortunes in the oil boom.

When they were arrested outside Lonnie’s truck stop over in Williston, the pair said they were so drunk they couldn’t remember where they had buried the teacher after snatching and murdering her. They still haven’t found her.

Johnston spoke to 28-year-old Crystal Keaster about Arnold’s gruesome story. She first came to Williston from Alaska in September 2011 to open a small coffee stand called C Cups Espresso.

As she brews cups of coffee for drivers that pull up to her window, she describes the current climate as “like the pipeline days in Alaska”.

It’s like 80 to one, women to men. And I’ll admit to having my concealed weapons permit.

“As a woman, you can’t be too careful,” she shrugged. “It’s just a matter of time before something happens.”

A number of women also told Johnston that they no longer go to Wal-mart alone. In fact, they rarely leave home without their boyfriends or husbands.

There is just enough concern that rumours, like the ones going around about male rape, have taken on a life of their own. A call to the Williston Police found that they agreed.

They said that the rape rumours, both male and female, keep popping up with no explanation. They say there’s nothing to back it up, and have had no reports of sexual assaults in the past six months – which is pretty good (and maybe better than most) for a town that’s grown from a population of 12,000 to 30,000.

Another lingering rumour is that women are being followed to their cars in the Wal-mart parking lot. There’s no proof of that either, but Erin Ling, a waitress at Lonnie’s truck stop claims, “The police don’t want people to know what’s going on.”